Terror Meets Soccer As PA Indoctrination Succeeds

Two recent soccer tournaments include only teams named after terrorists, four of them responsible for the most lethal attacks.

By Ari Yashar

First Publish: 11/15/2013, 8:45 AM

Illustration: Soccer on the Temple Mount

Temple Mount HQ

Two Palestinian Authority (PA) soccer tournaments in late October included teams exclusively named after terrorists, with four of them being behind some of the most lethal attacks on Israeli civilians. The linkage of soccer and terror highlights the success of PA propaganda glorifying terrorists.

Palestinian Media Watch reports that one of the tournaments, held at Al-Quds University, featured participation by teams named after the terrorists Dalal Mughrabi, Yahya Ayyash and Ghassan Kanafani.

Mughrabi led the most lethal terror attack in Israel's history when she hijacked a bus in 1978, killing 37 civilians, 12 of them children. Last month the PA named a ping pong tournament after her, and last year the PA similarly named a youth camp summer program, as well as several schools and and a boy scout groupafter the child-murdering terrorist.

Ayyash, known as "the Engineer," is considered the founder of Palestinian Authority suicide terror bombings, and planned attacks killing dozens and injuring hundreds. Kanafani was a leader of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has carried out numerous attacks.

Meanwhile a team named after Ziyad Da'as, commander of the Fatah terror faction Tanzim and planner of several attacks, participated in another tournament. In 2007 a soccer tournament was named after Da'as

The official PA daily Al-Hayyat Al-Jadida on October 27 reported results of the "Martyr Mahmoud Tamouni Tournament" that the Tamouni team won.

It noted that after the tournament Tamouni's brother "dedicated the big win and the tournament's success to the souls of his brother and all of Palestine's Martyrs, who are more honorable than all of us. Tamouni said that this tournament will continue to take place annually in order to remember the heroes whom we will never forget."